August 19, 2026

Two stocks are carrying the whole book right now

One position is up nearly 30%. The rest of the roster hasn't earned its keep yet.

Scoreboard Update

EXPERIMENT UPDATE — Day 33 System: +1.7% | SPY (same window): +2.4% | Alpha: -0.7% Win rate: 0% (0/10) Open positions: SNOW (day 24, +20.0%), CORT (day 23, +29.5%), CRNX (day 15, +0.9%), SLS (day 13, +14.0%), CRNX (day 10, +0.6%), CRNX (day 9, +0.5%), CRNX (day 8, +0.3%), CRNX (day 7, +0.2%), CRNX (day 6, +0.1%), CRNX (day 3, -0.0%), CRNX (day 2, -0.1%), CRNX (day 1, -0.1%)

Today's market and our positions

Thirty-three days in, and the headline number stings a little: system up +1.7%, SPY up +2.4% over the same window, alpha sitting at -0.7%. That's not where we want to be, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. But the aggregate is lying to you — at least partly. Dig into the per-position numbers and a different picture emerges: two trades doing serious work, seven entries in one name going nowhere, and a win-rate clock still frozen at zero closed trades. A lot is unresolved. SPY added +0.20% today and closed near $769 — a quiet session by any measure. Nothing broke, nothing ripped. A holding day for the market, and a holding day for us.

What our open trades are doing

CORT is the standout right now, and it isn't close. Day 23, entry at $91.92, sitting at $119.02 — that's +29.5% on the position while SPY has returned +3.81% over the same stretch. Alpha of +25.67%. The Relative Strength Engine flagged this one on a sustained divergence pattern, and it's delivered exactly that ever since: outperforming on up days, holding its ground when the market softens. No sign of distribution yet. SNOW is the other anchor. Day 24, entered at $270.92, now at $325.00 — a gain of +19.96% against SPY's +4.06% over the same period. That's +15.90% alpha. Same engine, same logic. Relative Strength caught it when it was quietly running ahead of its peers during a flat market phase. It's still running. SLS is smaller, but the setup is clean. Day 13, entry $12.15, now $13.91, up +14.45% while SPY is actually down -0.54% over the same window. A stock up double digits while the benchmark is in the red — that's precisely the kind of divergence the Relative Strength Engine is built to surface. This one has our attention. Then there's CRNX, which earns its own paragraph. Seven open entries, day 1 through day 15, all entered between $83.93 and $84.78, all sitting within pennies of current price at $84.69. The day-15 entry shows +0.91%. Everything else is essentially flat, a couple barely negative. The engine kept seeing relative strength signals in this name across multiple sessions — and so we kept entering. Whether that conviction pays off is a question only time answers. Right now, CRNX is neither helping nor hurting. It's just sitting there, waiting for a reason to move.

Today's closed trades, post-mortem

No trades closed today. No post-mortems to run. The book ended exactly where it started this morning — 12 open positions, zero realized outcomes. That zero-closed-trade count isn't an accident; it's how the Relative Strength Engine is designed to operate. It holds until an exit condition is triggered, not until a calendar date forces the issue. We don't manufacture activity to make the scoreboard look busier. What that also means, though, is that the win-rate figure of 0% (0/10 — those are previously closed trades) is the honest current number. We're not papering over it.

What could change by tomorrow's open

A few things worth sitting with before tomorrow's open. CRNX across seven entries is the concentration risk that jumps off the page. One piece of bad news overnight — a clinical update, a sector rotation, anything — and seven positions move against us at once. That's the reality of how the engine built this position incrementally, and it's a real exposure to carry. SNOW and CORT are both extended. Extended moves can absolutely keep extending, but they can also snap back hard on no news at all. Neither has flashed a reversal signal, but we're not treating either one as set-and-forget. And with overall alpha at -0.7%, the math is straightforward: the open winners need to keep widening, or new closed trades need to come in positive. The benchmark isn't waiting for us.

What we're watching tomorrow

Tomorrow morning the engines run their full scan before the open. The question worth asking: does CRNX finally pick a direction — or does it just add another flat day to the stack? SNOW and CORT have been carrying this book for over three weeks now. At some point, the rest of the roster needs to show up.

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“The Buck Stops Here”

Kelly Maguire

Behind the Markets

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